


Predestined

by maydei



Series: Two Hearts, One Name [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Loveless Fusion, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bittersweet, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Schmoop, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 22:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17333543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maydei/pseuds/maydei
Summary: With their fate mutually realized, Yuuri and Victor visit St. Petersburg.ForSoulbound, a Yuri!!! On Ice Soulmate Zine.





	Predestined

 

Russia is so much more intimidating once they land.

Victor keeps him close, a balmy presence at the back of his mind, warm and rich with amusement at Yuuri’s wonder, even while he is stewing in his own apprehension. Yuuri can sense it in him as they exit the international terminal, through the entire cab ride, all the way to the Seven Moons Academy in St. Petersburg—all the way to Yakov.

At their side, Lilia is a stone. She hides her anxiety well, Yuuri thinks, though between her and Victor, it weighs upon his shoulders. The silence is uncomfortable, anticipatory. 

She pays more attention to the halls of the Academy than Victor does. Yuuri wonders how long it’s been since she’s been home—whether she even considers it home anymore. Victor lays a hand upon her arm as they pass through the entryway. He offers her an encouraging smile that she does not return, because her eyes are not on Victor at all. Instead, she stares at the man who waits for them.

He is shorter than Lilia, balding, and what hair he has left is graying; it’s not the same silver Victor has been gifted with by genetics. They are his parents in heart only, but not in body—and Victor’s heart freezes when he is caught between them, choked with apprehension, limbs locked with tension.

_ I can’t be here. _ Yuuri feels the words behind his ribs, curling around his heart, and it is no sooner than they arrive that Victor excuses them both. Yuuri hardly has time to take in the sight of the place Victor used to call home before they retreat, escape out into the city with hands joined for a destination unknown.

“We should have stayed,” Yuuri murmurs to Victor, and though his voice is not loud enough to be heard above the dull roar of the subway, Victor hears him all the same. “For Lilia.”

“We couldn’t have done anything,” he replies. Their hands twine between their bodies, fingers tangle. “This is something they need to work out between the two of them.”

The train grinds to a halt. Victor leads Yuuri away, and once they escape the platform, insinuates himself comfortably at Yuuri’s side. Hip-to-hip, they wander two-wide down the sidewalk. Yuuri doesn’t ask where they are headed; instead, he surveys the nervous flutter he feels in Victor’s gut, admires the silver shine of his hair in the winter sunlight as it falls around his shoulders. They are snug in heavy coats, and even the frigid ocean wind cannot dim the glow of this moment. St. Petersburg is colder than Hasetsu, colder than Yuuri is used to, but all the more beautiful for Victor’s love of it.

“Where are we going?” The street sound is cacophonous, shouting voices and honking cars and public transit, the sizzle of food carts, the metal-on-concrete echo of construction. It hurts Yuuri’s ears, though he doesn’t say so—this place is Victor’s home, and he wants to appreciate it properly. It  _ is  _ beautiful, it’s just… busier.  _ More, _ in its own way, than the easy peace of Hasetsu.

Victor draws Yuuri’s hand into his pocket, rubs over wind-chafed knuckles with the pad of his thumb in an effort to comfort and warm. Yuuri ducks his head, smiles to himself, and cannot help the affectionate outward brush of their minds together. It’s so natural now, and comes without conscious thought. They rarely have cause or need to communicate with anything more than flickers of emotional intent; it makes the reality of Victor’s prior whispered words all the more striking, and all the more dear for how much he  _ needs _ . The comfort their bond can bring is limitless. Yuuri can’t remember the last time he felt alone in his mind. Months ago, surely. Perhaps so long ago that it was before they met—

—one year ago, Yuuri realizes. One year since that day, since their chain of events was set into motion, and the bond of destiny emerged from their souls and etched a mark on their bodies. One name shared between them, matching opalescent letters more lasting than a tattoo, more permanent than a scar.

In that time, so many things in their lives have changed. Fortunately, in regards to their hearts, everything has stayed the same.

They have been  _ Fated _ from the beginning, whether they knew it or not.

“Trust me,” Victor replies with a smile, and Yuuri does. He has never done anything else.

When they come upon their destination, Yuuri knows from the flicker of recognition in his chest, the nostalgic hum behind Victor’s teeth. He soaks in the sight of it with such keen attention that Yuuri sees the space in technicolor. It is both a novelty and nostalgia at once—the arch of the roof, the height of the pillars. The weight of the rink doors and their momentous swing as they close behind them; the scent of recycled air. It is a wash of sensory input in the taste of plastic and leather and diesel on his tongue, the soft scrape of sharpened metal against a memory.

The rink is worn, well-loved, stained with handprints along the boards in much the same way that the base is scraped by the repetitive passes of the zamboni. The far wall is a construct of modern architecture, a grid of beams and panes of glass that cast strips of sunlight across the ice. Vaulted ceilings support a complex structure of overhead lights. The effect is not unlike an industrial-grade cathedral; it is a church for the most dedicated and graceful of humanity, rather than the divine grace of the unseen. 

“Oh,” Yuuri whispers, and he knows. The Seven Moons Academy in St. Petersburg may be where Victor grew up, but this was surely his home.

“You know it?” Victor asks. 

Yuuri shakes his head. His eyes are wide with wonder, taking in the play of light, so much brighter than the Ice Castle. “No, but I feel it.”

Victor smiles. He squeezes Yuuri’s hand in his own, and it fades out to something soft, small, sweet. For a moment, they are quiet—a beginner’s class of children giggle and chase one another, soft child-ears twitching with energy and enthusiasm. Blue eyes track the movements of little feet, and Victor rests his chin in his other palm, elbow propped on the boards. “This used to be my favorite place in the world.”

Yuuri frees their linked hands in favor of reaching over and setting his palm on Victor’s bent spine. He rubs comforting circles, waiting in silence for the words Victor is still searching for. 

“I have so many memories here,” he murmurs, and arches like a cat into Yuuri’s loving hands. “With Lilia and Yakov. Even after my name appeared, Lilia would bring me here. Always late at night, so I could play my music as loud as I wanted, and if I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was competing.” Victor ducks his head forward and melts into the touch when Yuuri massages the juncture of his neck, still tense from the flight, and feels the satisfaction of it in his own bones. “Once she was gone, I would still come, but I’d sit in the bleachers and just… smell the rink air, and remember. Hope that the future would be worth it. That my bonded would be worth it.”

Yuuri smiles. He knows the answer before he asks the question. “Do you think I am?”

Victor stands, straight and tall, and reaches out to wrap an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders. He bends down to kiss the crown of his head with a smile. “Do you have to ask?”

“No—I know what you think, and I know you’re crazy,” Yuuri replies with a laugh. He hums his contentment, watches the little ones dart across the ice. Is another future Olympian among them, he wonders? Memories flit across the forefront of his mind: the draw he’d felt through the grainy tube television screen, the enchantment. He confesses softly, “When I saw you skate, I think I knew you then.”

Victor glances at him, quiet and curious, but Yuuri can feel the faint buzz of wonder at the back of his brain, the intrigue. “Mari said you recognized me the first time you saw me in Hasetsu.”

“She was right.” Yuuri turns his head, looks up at Victor and lets his eyes fall the length of his lovely silver hair. “You’re unmistakable.”

Victor huffs a laugh, nudges Yuuri with his hip. His smile tempers into something distant, something bittersweet. It’s further away than Yuuri can safely follow, and so he waits. Waits until the smile melts away and leaves only the tinge of memory. Waits until Victor’s sadness becomes too encompassing to ignore, encroaches on the borders of his mind.

Yuuri unzips his winter coat. Beneath it is a familiar garment, well-loved, white and red and branded with the vintage insignia of the Russian Olympic team. It draws Victor’s gaze with fond attention. This particular garment carries the weight of their personal history, rebranded over the shape of a childhood memory.

Yuuri rests his coat over the boards, heedless of the rink’s temperate chill. He reaches out and feels peace when he cups Victor’s cheeks, guides him down for a quick, stolen kiss. Yuuri slips his fingers under the collar of Victor’s coat and gives it an insistent tug. “Let’s skate.”

Victor’s eyes snap open, wide and blue. “What?”

“Let’s skate,” Yuuri insists with a grin. “Make new memories here. We skate together at the Ice Castle all the time.”

“With  _ our _ skates,” Victor replies. 

“We can rent for a few hours, it’s not gonna kill us,” Yuuri points out reasonably. Another tug. A pleading expression—one he knows is rarely denied. “Please, Vitya?”

Victor sighs, unzips his coat. He’s so pale that the peach tone of his shirt looks vibrant against his skin, accenting the pink undertones of his cheeks. He looks so lovely like this, and Yuuri doesn’t hesitate to lean close, to nuzzle and purr his approval at the crest of Victor’s shoulder with such overbearing affection that he’s eventually swatted away. Victor’s eyes glimmer as he laughs, and Yuuri knows he’s won the battle; their winter coats rest side-by-side on the boards as they search out the small rec office and retrieve two pairs of generic, unattractive ice skates. 

“These feel wrong,” Victor complains with a pinched expression as they sit offside the rink and tie themselves in with frayed laces—and it’s true, Yuuri has to concede, at the pinch of their toes and the improper way the sole hits the arch of his foot. 

But he’s not here to win a competition today, he’s here to skate with his beloved, his bonded, his  _ boyfriend. _ “Just don’t jump and we’ll be fine,” Yuuri replies. At Victor’s exasperated frown, Yuuri quirks his eyebrows and tilts his head; smothers his smile as he says, “Do all Junior World Champions complain this much, or is it just the pretty ones?”

Victor huffs, but the hard edges of his frown finally relax into something dramatic and performative, and not at all actually angry at Yuuri’s affectionate tease. He hides a smile inside his eyes when he says, “Only the  _ prettiest _ ones.”

Yuuri laughs as he stands, wobbles, catches himself on the boards before he steadies. He holds out his hands to Victor with a widening grin, and feels the brush of fond love, tangible as fingers in his hair that stroke softly across his scalp. On the physical plane, Victor twines their fingers together. It is the perfect marriage of two sensations, and Yuuri is more than satisfied.

When they step onto the ice, everything is color. Love in pink and memory in blue, the amalgam of the two in a stunning lavender hue. With time it shrinks, subsides—more negative space and neutral emotion with the cutting sound of their skates, more memories glossed over and deep blade-grooves worn smooth by worshipful attention. The pink overtakes it, and in some places darkens to red. Yuuri tastes it in the air, vibrating between them as their hands link, as they push off and glide.

In a way, the ice is as second nature to them as their bond, battle-forged and tested. But this—this is more pleasant. All of the reward, and none of the risk. Here, there is no need for Fighter and Sacrifice. Here they are only partners, only souls bound with kinship and mutual love.

Yuuri doesn’t miss the wistful look in Victor’s eyes as the children skitter around them. He knows, in the back of his mind, that it is no longer the past that Victor is looking toward, but the future. 

As the class breaks up and leaves them alone on the ice, they evolve. Their mutual wandering becomes a drifting dance, and when Yuuri reaches for Victor, he reaches back. Cold hands brush against chilled skin, smiles spread wide, and when they kiss and Yuuri’s belly swoops with the sensation of flight, it’s from the ice moving beneath their feet. 

He is content. More importantly, Victor is content. Whatever conflicts they may face in St. Petersburg, they can weather them as they always do—together, in all things.

They return to the boards and lean back against them, sharing one last moment on the ice. 

“You know,” Victor murmurs, “I’m glad we came.”

“Me too,” Yuuri replies.

Between them, Victor squeezes his hand. Though there are different sizes and shapes to their palms, their hands match in the only way that matters. 

“This isn’t home anymore,” Victor says. Stares at the walls, the windows, the raised seating all around, and sighs. “But that’s okay. I think I knew in my head and my heart that my life would change. That fate would bring me to you.” He smiles faintly. Looks over at Yuuri with his blue eyes, his pink cheeks, and in his soul, Victor is totally at peace. “Fate brought me home.”

“Don’t give them all the credit. We made our home,” Yuuri replies, though not unkindly. Takes in the profile of the man he’s always loved, and has grown to love. “We fought for our home, Vitya.”

“And for each other.”

Yuuri nods. Victor understands. He always understands. 

Yuuri holds their hands up in the mid-day light and admires the glimmer of their names. Distantly, he wonders what it might be like—to have the life he always imagined having when he grew up, before he knew about magic and soulmates. Before he knew about Fighters and Sacrifices and all the things one could fight for and sacrifice in the name of loving one another. 

He doesn’t want to give anything up ever again. Certainly not this. And if there’s a way to make it his, to keep it forever, and for everyone to know…

Yuuri eyes their naked fingers, and tucks the thought in a shadowed, private corner of his mind. He bites it back with a smile. 

Some things are best left as surprises, even among the predestined.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is it, the final piece of the Fatedverse, which fits between Fated and Chosen! Thank you so much to everyone who joined me on this journey. <3


End file.
